Handshake
by TheJesusFreak777
Summary: Bottles and bar fights tend to be what Neville Longbottom's life is now. That is, until the ice breaks and he steps over the line.


**A/N: Remember how I published Foxtrot and it wasn't angst-y or depressing at all? Yeah. Like that was going to last very long. Back to my norm! Please review! Also, kudos to whoever gets the Romeo Dallaire references**.

* * *

I don't believe it.

The war is over-over, and over for certain, and Voldemort is gone. Across the wizarding world, celebrations were being held, people could sleep safely at night, and life was going to go on again.

For some of us, anyway.

Ever since I first came across the body of a fourteen-year-old among the rubble and wreckage, I knew then that this was all hell.

He'd been just another casualty. But still. It hurts.

I stayed at the cemetery on Hogwarts grounds for ages. I still do, even though it's July now, and two months have passed. I'm not the only one still at Hogsmeade. There are lots of us, actually. Ice courses through my veins every time my eyes fall on headstone.

He'd been a Ravenclaw. Never in the D.A. Never good at playing Quidditch. Never rebellious. Never stood out. Never even good at being a Ravenclaw, really. He was the miscellaneous, and perhaps he should've been discarded into Hufflepuff, but he hadn't been. He was a bit like me, before Harry and Ron and Hermione took me under their wings in my fifth year.

I didn't even know what happened, and why he had stayed behind, until his funeral, in which his teary-eyed sister approached me and told me that he'd been in the bathroom when McGonagall had ordered everyone below seventeen to leave, and that when she had found him, she'd tried to get him to come, but he hadn't. He had insisted on fighting.

I wish I had been a better leader, because Harry hadn't been there for the D.A. that last year, and when he'd been in the D.A., it had actually been Hermione doing most of the leadership stuff. Maybe if I'd been a better leader people like Skandar Scrubb, Ravenclaw, fourteen years old, would still be alive, and Susan Scrubb, sixteen years old, Ravenclaw, would be happy.

When I go to the cemetery, I normally pay my respects to Dumbledore and Fred and Lupin and Colin Creevey and Alicia Spinnet and a few others from the D.A. But I always make sure I avoid Skandar Scrubb's grave.

I can't really say why I avoid his for a specific reason other than guilt, which is sort of a shitty reason, but it's the only one I have. It's like there was this thin layer of ice separating me from this, and the entire time I led the D.A. and helped with the Order of the Phoenix and throughout most of the last battle, the ice had held. But until late that night, when Oliver Wood and I were carrying blackened bodies and the shaking dying to the Great Hall, it had broke. It had cracked as soon as I'd seen Skandar Scrubb, a boy I'd never even met, lying dead beside a smoke- and soot-streaked wall. He had been small and helpless. The ice split. The dark water below looked oddly inviting. And then I had plunged deep into this.

It was July, but it felt like November or December. Icy and bitter and all that. Maybe I'm a week from turning eighteen, but it feels like I'm an old man on the inside. A crippled one, at that, or one with no legs, period; who has more health problems than he really needs, like arthritis and kidney failure or maybe an aneurysm, along the lines of fatality. So on the outside, I was Neville Longbottom, eighteen, with a snake's head on my trophy case (I didn't really still have it, that would be a bit odd) and an Order of Merlin, first class, hanging on my wall. Inside, I was an old miser amputee. That's how it feels, anyway. Maybe I have a brain tumor. Don't those change personalities sometimes, make people forget who they're supposed to be? I'm supposed to be me, Neville Longbottom, meek and friendly and timid. Not a hero. I've forgotten who I am. So have they. Professor McGonagall would sometimes join me as I paid my respects, but more often than not, being older and frailer than ever, she stayed inside.

I'd taken to drink in the two months since. I know Professor McGonagall worries about me, and Hermione, too. When I first opened the bottle of whiskey, I knew I was shaking hands with the devil. The truth was, that was okay with me. The devil and I had really gotten to know each other ever since. I bought liquor and brought my anger and grief out. He patted me on the shoulder and encouraged me to continue. I think maybe he wanted the best for me, too, just in a different way.

I wake up that morning with a terrible headache, which is all too familiar, and head outside into Hogsmeade. The room I was staying in was in an ancient building that mainly housed elderly witches who smelled like sour milk, but it was cheap. I traipse up the lane to Hogwarts, nod to Professor Sprout, who was coming down from the castle, and step off the road to the grounds. The cemetery is almost always deserted this time of the day, so obviously I was startled when, rounding the corner of Hagrid's cabin, I saw a body huddled over a grave, sobbing loudly. I recognize easily enough the grave. Skandar Scrubb. It was a nice gravestone, I guess. Polite and professional. Flitwick had decided on the inscription. I'd made it habit not to read it.

Wallowing in misery makes for a nice life. So far it had introduced me to the bottle and bad migraines. Maybe it would introduce me to liver failure, too. It'd be a nice finale. There's only so much charms can do, and I don't have any family who's eligible to give me their organs.

So there I am, watching some anonymous bastard cry on the grave of another almost anonymous bastard who ruined my life. And I'm contemplating drinking myself to death, because it sounds like it would at least be a bit more enjoyable than, I don't know, jumping. Jumping would be kind of thrilling, but only for a second or two. Drinking is long term and I could meet people one night and not remember them the next. Like rewinding on constant loop. It'd be nice.

So there I am, deciding on the more entertaining ways to die, being a bigger bastard than anyone. Scrubb's dead, and dead in the ground. He fucking died. And I don't even know if he knows me, Neville Longbottom, the awkward kid who'd never been kissed and turned into a smart ass with poor dental work and nearly got everyone killed.

When Hermione finally got cleared to leave St. Mungo's last month, she called me and we drank, and then she tried jumping in front of a car in London. I'll never forget Ron's face as he wrapped his arms around her as she cried into his shoulder. It's not like I have anyone to hold me like that, to be there for the instability. Except McGonagall, and she's more like my elderly aunt or something. I guess the devil's all I got.

I watch as the sobbing guy pries himself off the ground and turns. I can't see his face well because for some reason I'm crying now. As he passes me, I hear him say, "Longbottom?"

His voice is recognizable. I'd remember his voice anywhere. I was wrong, I'm not the biggest bastard there. He is. I pull back my fist and punch him.

"What the hell?"

I knock him to the ground with another hit. Never mind the fact that I have a wand. I'm not a coward like he is.

"Stay the hell away from here!" I yell. "Stay away from me and here and us!"

In the end I'm too good of a person to let him die of internal bleeding or something, so I go back to the castle and get Madam Pomfrey. In my defense, he deserved it, and in my defense of serving him justice, I took my time, because I still had a bad headache and no one would really care if someone offed him. Madam Pomfrey fixed him quickly and then he left.

I didn't think much of it until I went to the Hog's Head later that night. My hand still hurt a lot and I'd refused to let Madam Pomfrey look at it. I let the devil lead me to my solace and he poured me a whiskey and I drank it and he smiled at me and encouraged me to do another shot.

Someone slaps me on the back. "Heard you knocked Malfoy on his ass today."

"Yeah," I say, grinning. "It was nice." Before, before the D.A., I'd never have dreamed of punching anyone.

"Good man, Longbottom."

They toast to me and somewhere in my sluggish mind I feel welcome. That is, until I hear shouting, and my thoughts are mashed together and I don't understand until a hand grabs the collar of my shirt and pulls me backwards off my chair and into the floor.

"Get the hell out of here!"

"You're not welcome here!"

"Fuck off! Get off him!"

They're not jeering at me, because I feel bone hit my chin and blood fills my mouth. They wouldn't jeer at me after they toasted to me, would they? Unless it's some kind of crappy conspiracy.

"Get out of my bar!"

The heel of a shoe crushes down on my face. My eye socket must be turned into powder instead of solid.

"Get off him!"

"Get off him now!"

"I'll kill him myself! Call the Auror department!"

"You're gonna kill him!"

I fucking shook hands with the devil. Like that was a good idea.

A fist hits my cheekbone. I try to get in a fetal position but it hurts it hurts bad and someone's beating the shit out of me and I'm gonna die on the floor of a bar because shaking hands with the devil did not exactly ensure an enjoyable death and it hurts and it bleeds and it bruises and it aches.

Someone pulls him off and there's shouting. I try to open my eyes but when they don't I start to cry and it hurts more than getting a foot in my eye. I cry blood and people are shouting and I am dying and I see red and then darkness.

* * *

I wake up in a whitewashed room. St. Mungo's. I'm in St. Mungo's. I've been enough to recognize the walls.

And I wake up.

My eyes flicker open and I can see. I can _see._

"We had to do emergency surgery on you, Mr. Longbottom. Our potions specialist fixed your broken bones and a charms Healer had to alleviate the pressure on your optic nerve. You're alive, Mr. Longbottom."

"Where is he?"

"Aurors have Mr. Malfoy in custody, but since everyone claims he was provoked, if you wish not to press charges, they'll release him."

"Let me see him."

The Healer frowns but returns with an Auror, who is handcuffed to Draco Malfoy.

"You're a bastard," I say coldly. "You almost killed me."

"You provoked me."

"I'm not pressing charges."

Just that simple sentence is enough for the Auror to leave. Which sort of pisses me off.

"You're not pressing charges?"

"Nah. I needed stopping."

"I was going to kill you, Longbottom. I wanted to kill you."

"Why were you at Skandar Scrubb's grave?"

"I watched him die."

"I found him."

I'm talking to Draco Malfoy, who just tried to kill me shortly before. I almost went blind. I almost died. I'm a bastard and he's a bastard and we're all bastards.

"It's my fault he died. Macnair killed him. I watched and didn't do anything, but I could have."

"You're a bastard," I repeat. "You tried to kill me."

"Why aren't you pressing charges?"

"I wanted to die."

"So?"

"So kill me! Kill me right now! Cut some wires, overdose me on Draught of Peace, do something! Kill me!"

He steps back. "I don't even know you, Longbottom. We've shared maybe five sentences, we punched each other. And I don't want anyone else's blood on me."

"You seem sane," I muse. "Why? You're not even messed up or anything."

"You're insane, Longbottom! Insane! Crazy! Don't drink and quit going to the graves!"

"You were there!"

"I was making peace, Longbottom!" He's leaving now. "I'm sorry I fought you. I'm making peace right now, okay? I forgave myself."

And then he's gone.

I stare up at the ceiling, wondering why I hadn't pressed charges. He certainly deserved it. But maybe his therapist was on to something. Maybe his therapist could get me out of my handshake.

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**I realize the ending made no sense but I was tired of writing this so I just ended it really crappily. Please review!**


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